Today would have been my older sister Julie’s 54th birthday. Tragically, we lost her the night before Thanksgiving in 1989, just one day after her 18th birthday. I was 11 years old, in 5th grade, and my younger sister was only 7. That year, Thanksgiving fell on November 23rd, and instead of celebrating, we found ourselves grieving a loss that changed our family forever.

I remember that Wednesday night vividly. I was staying at my grandparents’ house, just a few miles down Sandfort Road from our own home. Their house was the old family home, with parts more than a century old. The property had once held a little store and a cotton gin, surrounded by fields where my grandfather planted cotton and soybeans before later converting them to pine trees. Those fields were where he taught me to drive at the age of nine. That house was more than a home—it was a place where generations had lived, worked, and gathered. I spent countless weekends and summer nights there, always choosing to sleep on the sofa in the den, a space converted from a covered porch.

That Wednesday afternoon, I helped my grandmother prepare dishes we would carry to Thanksgiving dinner the next day. But late that night, she woke me from the sofa, upset, and told me we needed to go back home. When we arrived, my mother embraced me tightly and told me Julie had been in an accident. From that moment, everything became a whirlwind.

The next day, Thanksgiving, people poured into our home to offer condolences. My grandfather, a county commissioner, seemed to know half the county, and their presence was both overwhelming and comforting. I remember sitting at the piano, playing “We Three Kings” over and over, trying to distract myself from the grief that hung in the air.

Julie was beautiful inside and out. She had just begun her freshman year at Auburn University a couple of months earlier and had pledged Phi Mu. She was full of promise, and losing her at such a young age was devastating. Yet even in that loss, I knew one thing: if I ever had a daughter, I would name her Julie, to honor my sister. Years later, when our first child was born, we chose her name without hesitation. Today, my daughter Julie—and her younger sister Caroline—bring joy and light into our lives, carrying forward the love that my sister embodied.

I often wonder what Julie would have become. She had modeled during her teenage years, and her future seemed wide open. I wonder what she would think of her namesake, and of Caroline too. One of my earliest memories of her is a family trip to Disney World when I was about four years old, before my younger sister was born. Epcot was still being built then, and Julie’s smiles made the trip great. She was always smiling. Perhaps that is the biggest thing I remember about her, her smiles.

Though Julie has been gone for 36 years, her memory is woven into the fabric of my life—through the fields where my grandfather taught me, the meals prepared with my grandmother, the piano keys I pressed to cope with grief, and most of all, through the joy of my daughters. Julie is terribly missed, but her legacy lives on in the love we continue to share.